Caging Your Winter

There seems to be a mistaken notion amongst a few of my friends that my love for entertainment that they see as bad or cheesy is some ironic hipster love. It's not. I really do adore great Bollywood musicals like "Om Shanti Om" and "Kal Ho Naa Ho" as sheer entertainment with great music and infectious melodrama. While I make a habit of watching bad disaster films on purpose, I really am in love with the genre, and a truly great disaster movie really does thrill me, regardless of the standard cliches that I like to recognize and riff on. And for better or worse, my fascination with Nicolas Cage isn't based entirely on mockery or even just a desire to see him do crazy shit on screen. Which he does. A lot.

Here's the thing about Nic Cage: he is both a terrific actor and a very bad one. Often he is simultaneously both. He has repeatedly shown that he excels at comedy ("Raising Arizona", "Moonstruck", "Lord of War", "Adaptation") and some people think he's turned in great dramatic performances, although I remain somewhat skeptical. (I still haven't sat down to watch "Leaving Las Vegas" even though since I Caged my Queue it was sent to me a few weeks ago. I finally returned it unwatched.) He also excels at being entertaining, taking himself very seriously, and not taking himself seriously at all. And of course, he's the master of losing his shit.



I can't honestly say that I love Nic Cage, or even particularly like him as an actor, but I am fascinated. I am fascinated by his film choices, which I refuse to believe are motivated entirely by the need to fund his extravagant lifestyle and the back taxes he owes the IRS. I am fascinated why he can take a relatively staid role, such as that of the prudish policeman in "The Wicker Man" and crazy it up, and then take a role that seems to scream for some Cageian over-the-top antics, such as the role of the wizard Yensid in "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" and dial it down to the point where Alfred Molina comes across as the hamming-it-up-for-fun guy in the movie. I am fascinated by his increasingly-bizarre choice of hairpieces, his predilection for inappropriate accents, and why he does half his acting with his mouth open. This is not distanced hipster irony - I really want to know why Nic Cage does what he does, and I find most of his performances to be genuinely entertaining if not baffling.

So imagine my squeals of sheer delight when I discovered the folks at the Metreon theater (we were there to see "Unstoppable" - see love of disaster films above) were nice enough to put the posters for both upcoming Nic Cage releases next to each other. Double the Cage, double my excitement! And both films look amazingly Cage-y in different ways.

The first one is the grammatically-confusingly titled "Drive Angry". Is it a command? A description of how Cage drives his fleet of Mazaratis? The poster let me know it was filmed in 3-D (which is an important distinction I guess when we think of the 3-D used in "Alice in Wonderland" or "Clash of the Titans"). I have never seen Cage in 3-D so I'm already happy that we as a culture are going to collectively experience the milestone of what his hairpieces will look like when they're popping out at us in all their confusing glory.



So it's a sort of "Gone in 60 Seconds" meets "Ghost Rider" meets whatever.



Hell factors in the tagline for the other upcoming Cage film as well, "Season of the Witch." "And a hero will raise hell!" Which is confusing because based on the trailer, Knight Cage is supposed to be avoiding hell being raised by transporting a suspected witch (under orders from the knight at the end of "The Last Crusade" even!) to some monks or something. Have we seen Cage as a knight before? His hair is way better in this than in "Drive Angry" - between that and his refusal to do an English-ish accent, he may be going full Costner on us in this one. But I'm kind of stoked about it anyway, because my inner child still loves the Ren Faire, and Ron Fucking Perlman, okay? OKAY.



Is anyone else as excited about these two movies as I am? "Witch" hits in January (after the release being held up for nearly a year - I know! And we can all "Drive Angry" in February. Thank god I'll have something to look forward to since we had such a boring Summer and Xmas movie season. I only wish Cage had a big enough cult following to guarantee midnight screenings.

Yay Area Bucket Foodie List

Since Germany is looking more and more likely, I'm starting to think more and more about what I'm going to miss about Oakland, the Bay Area, and California in general. What do we have here that I won't be able to get in Germany in terms of food? Of course food is my primary concern! I suppose there will be other things - experiences, obviously, household items - that I'm used to that will be difficult or impossible to obtain there. But really, I'm just worried about the food. Germans are notorious for not liking spicy food. Does this mean I need to buy one of each hot sauce available at Ranch 99 and ship it over? Am I going to be dependent on high-postage care packages from friends to get my huitlacoche and pasilla peppers?

Obviously German will be lacking in several cuisines I'm accustomed to, like New American, Southern, Californian, Mexican and others although those are my biggest concerns and what I predict I will be most homesick for. Websites assure me that Indian, Thai and Chinese cuisines exist in Germany and are decent to good, but does that mean I'll be able to find anything like the spicy stinky tofu at Spices III in Oakland, or good dim sum?

So I'm trying to compile two lists: foodstuffs to bring, and things to eat here before we go. Yep, I'm gonna arrive in Germany even fatter, because if nothing else I enjoy embodying stereotypes. What I want to do is eat at a least the more reasonably priced places I always meant to get around to doing so and haven't, as well as eat at my old favorite haunts.

I am not sure if this level of food obsession is healthy or natural but I don't really care. If I may not have Sabuy Sabuy's thai toast* for a year or longer, I sure as hell am going to eat it before I leave. Since I'm heading to my hometown, Woodland tonight, you know that I'm going to be paying La Guadalajara Taqueria a visit. Mmmm, al pastor tacos.

*For those who are unlucky enough to not know what thai toast is: ground shrimp and pork and peanuts, spread on white bread, which is then battered and deep fried and served with peanut sauce i.e. the most perfect food item in all creation.

Anderson Valley Camping Trip

Several weeks ago, our good friend Matt wanted to make full use of his temporary funemployment to go camping during the week. The thing about camping in California is that we're kind of an outdoorsy bunch, and despite the huge number of state-run campgrounds, it is nigh to impossible to get a spot at a good campground on a weekend in summer unless you reserve it months in advance. We're not so good with planning but one of the many, many benefits of unemployment is that you're not tied into the Man's concepts of "weekdays" and "weekends". So we started our adventure on Monday morning, making good time to Hendy Woods State Park, where we'd reserved a cabin on short notice. Easiest camping trip ever!


































The Anderson Valley is in eastern Mendocino county, a valley of deep redwoods forests on one side, and grassy oak and chapparal hills on the other, with the Navarro river running through the center and out to the Pacific Ocean. It's a fertile and temperate area, and has been prized farmland for over a century, and since the 70's, California's best winemaking region.








I'm sure some other winos might disagree, but at the very least as a wine tourist, the Anderson Valley is the place to be. It's far enough from the Bay Area (2 1/2 to 3 hour drive) that the wine traffic is super-light. It's gorgeous. The wineries there are causal and unpretentious, yet incredibly serious about making amazing wine, particularly the more difficult varietals that thrive off the sunny days and cool foggy evenings and mornings: Pinot Noir and Gewurztraminer in particular, but all major white varietals do well here. The Anderson Valley is what I imagine Napa and Sonoma Valleys used to be like 30 years ago - half the time, you're talking to the winemaker directly, there are no tasting fees (or you might be asked to pay $3, waived if you buy a bottle, of course). And most importantly, everything is delicious!

Unfortunately for Chris, he started feeling ill nearly as soon as we arrived.  He refused that we drive back home, so Matt and I left him in the cabin (I'm a terrible girlfriend) and started exploring.  We spent the next few days hiking, tasting some of the best pinot noirs we've EVER had, splashing around in the local swimming hole, eating orchard-fresh apples, quaffing beers at the Anderson Valley Brewing Company and generally having a fantastic time, all while poor Chris shivered with fever from apparently having strep throat.  Karma got me in the end - I picked it up when we got home, and it was the sickest I've been in my adult life.  But what a fun trip!

HEY Y'ALL!

Goodbye LJ! Hello real blogosphere! I hope at least a few of my buds will attempt to follow me and my borin' life over here.

I hope to use this space kind of like I used my previous online journal, with a focus on food, local culture, travel, PICTURES and probably still some talk of feminism and social justice issues because I'm serious business.

Also I like to swim.



Hello!